SYNOPSIS

On the day of a father's unexpected death, six family members each seek ways to manage their grief. In the face of his sudden absence, the ordinary takes on heightened meaning.

An ode to the beauty of life & death and the incomprehensible mystery of it all, THE DAY THAT is a poetic exploration that's both profoundly personal and unquestionably universal.

We all vanish.

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT

I woke up one summer morning to find that my father had vanished from the face of the earth. He’d had a heart attack in his sleep. And yet the world outside, sun trickling down onto the streets of Brooklyn, was completely alive in all of its beauty & glorious mundanity. I’d been thinking about the paradox of that day for 15 years. The creative result is THE DAY THAT.

Our process in making the film was highly unusual, and the finished film is bold in its unconventionality and playfulness with form. It relies on the accumulation of image upon image to create narrative and drama. And while it was scripted, we took a somewhat documentary approach that allowed for things to simply unfold as they did. The actors were encouraged to bring themselves and their own stories to the table through improvisation, blending reality and fiction. This process of discovery allowed for the story, which was rooted in my own personal experience of loss, to move beyond mere memoir and to be imbued with the fingerprints of universality (as well as the wonderful spontaneity of everyday life). The final product is a different kind of movie experience that feels like nothing else.